‘Die, My Love’ review: Jennifer Lawrence sparks Lynne Ramsay’s portrait of a troubled marriage

Dir: Lynne Ramsay. Canada. 2025. 119mins

As a new mother unravelling in terrifying fashion, Jennifer Lawrence is the match that lights Lynne Ramsay’s gripping, slow-burn fifth feature. Die, My Love begins as a story of postpartum depression, but this adaptation of the Ariana Harwicz novel quickly reveals new layers, examining mental health and the passionate bond between volatile lovers that’s so feverish it can sometimes make them feel like they’re losing their minds.

Jennifer Lawrence is the match that lights Lynne Ramsay’s gripping, slow-burn fifth feature

Ramsay’s third straight Cannes Competition entry — following We Need To Talk About Kevin (2011) and You Were Never Really Here (2017) — should be a high-profile arthouse item thanks to its stars Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, who play a combustible married couple. The challenges of motherhood have been on display in recent films such as Nightbitch and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (which won its star Rose Byrne the best leading performance award in Berlin), but the way in which Ramsay and Lawrence interrogate these traumas give this psychological drama its own unnerving rhythms.

Grace (Lawrence) and Jackson (Pattinson) have just moved into Jackson’s late uncle’s home in forested upstate New York, and are ready to start a family. Soon, Grace gives birth to a son but, in the subsequent months, she starts exhibiting strange behaviour – like crawling on her hands and knees outside the property, a carving knife in her hand. Initially those around her — including Jackson’s mother Pam (Sissy Spacek) — insist that it’s common for a new mother to feel a little “loopy” but as Grace’s reality gives way to wild fantasies, it becomes apparent that something more troubling is taking place.

Die, My Love finds Ramsay returning to thematic and tonal terrain she’s masterfully tackled in previous films. If Ratcatcher and You Were Never Really Here took audiences into the worldview of characters with fracturing psyches, We Need To Talk About Kevin dealt with the potential hell of motherhood in a frank manner. But while her new film recalls past triumphs, it also delivers a fragile love story like nothing she’s attempted before.

Lawrence has previously gone for broke as an embattled mother in 2017’s frenzied horror Mother!, but in Die, My Love, she gives a performance that is far more naturalistic, which makes Grace’s sudden erratic actions all the more inexplicable and alarming. Whether dragging her nails across the bathroom wall, leaving her fingers bloody, or having sexual thoughts about a random motorcyclist (LaKeith Stanfield), who could be a figment of her imagination, Grace is a worst-case scenario for all women who have experienced postpartum depression, practically turning feral as she navigates her uncontrollable impulses.

As the film grows increasingly discomfiting, editor Toni Froschhammer skilfully blends past and present, what’s real and what’s not, in such a way that audiences may not always be able to distinguish. It makes for enthralling viewing, especially as Ramsay refuses to pin Grace’s issues to any one source. Yes, perhaps postpartum depression is a factor, but Die, My Love shows just enough of Grace and Jackson’s backstory to offer clues into what has always been a tempestuous relationship. Slyly, the film argues that, even if postpartum depression is a topic we don’t talk about enough, to simply slap that label on Grace would be to ignore other warning signs that were there long before. It’s a sign of the film’s disorienting power that only at the end do we actually learn the baby’s name — a detail, like so many others, that has fallen by the wayside as Grace struggles to maintain her sanity.

While it would be inaccurate to call Die, My Love a dark comedy, Lawrence’s underrated comedic gifts come in handy as Grace (metaphorically) sets fire to the banal domestic trappings she resents around her. The Oscar-winning actress gives a volcanic performance that is nonetheless very controlled, avoiding melodramatic theatrics. Pattinson plays off his costar superbly, giving us an inattentive husband who comes to realise how little he understands about his wife.